BERKELEY, Hon. Francis William Fitzhardinge (1826-1896), of Berkeley Lodge, Fishbourne, Chichester

Berkeley was the product of a very prominent Whig family. His father, a distinguished naval officer, sat for Gloucester in 1831-3, 1835-7 and 1841-57, and served successive Liberal ministries as a lord of the admiralty. In 1857 he succeeded his brother to the vast Berkeley estates, which included valuable property in London, and was awarded the barony of Fitzhardinge in 1861, whereupon Berkeley received the title ‘Honourable’ by courtesy.HP Commons, 1820-1832, iv. 261-2; A. Lambert, ‘Berkeley, Maurice Frederick Fitzhardinge Berkeley’, Oxf. DNB, v. 386-7. Possession of these estates had made his brother William ‘the mainstay of the Whigs in Gloucestershire and adjoining counties’, and three of Berkeley’s uncles sat for seats in the county after 1832.HP Commons, 1790-1820, iii. 194. Francis Henry Fitzhardinge Berkeley sat for Bristol, 1837-70; George Charles Grantley Fitzhardinge Berkeley sat for West Gloucestershire, 1832-52; and Craven Fitzhardinge Berkeley sat for Cheltenham 1832-47, 1848 and 1852-5. Of his father’s cousins, Grenville Charles Lennox Berkeley sat for Cheltenham 1848-52, 1855-6, and for Evesham 1852-5, and Sir George Henry Frederick Berkeley sat for Devonport, 1852-7: Oxf. DNB, v. 357, 375-8; Stenton, Who’s Who of British MPs, i. 31-2.

Berkeley joined the Royal Horse Guards aged 17 in September 1844 and became well-known by ‘his nickname of the Giant’.F. Boase, Modern English Biography, v. 305. Berkeley’s regiment was not posted to the Crimea, and he does not appear to have seen action: J.B.R. Nicholson, The British Army in the Crimea (1974), 12. In the early 1850s he assisted his uncle, Lord Ducie, in his role as leader of the Liberal party in Gloucestershire, and was brought forward for Cheltenham in May 1856 after his kinsman, Grenville Berkeley, accepted a commissionership of customs.Bristol Mercury, 30 June 1896; Morning Post, 5 May 1856, quoting Cheltenham Looker-on. Backed by ‘the Berkeley Castle interest’, he expressed support for the ballot, the abolition of church rates, and the general, but not compulsory, education of the people, and beat the former Conservative member for Newry, Edward Gilling Hallewell, by a clear margin.Morning Post, 18 Apr. 1859, 8 June 1856; Daily News, 9 May 1856; Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1857 new parliament), 145.

Although genial, Berkeley could be brusque. He was ‘noted for his short terse speeches at public functions, and his dislike of long-winded addresses on the part of others’, and is not known to have spoken in the House.Bristol Mercury, 30 June 1896. Nevertheless, he ‘generally succeeded in making a most amusing speech’ at his annual rent-audit dinners at Berkeley: The Times, 30 June 1896. Indeed, he did not take a very active role in parliament, and does not appear to have sat on any select committees or introduced any bills. He voted 39 times in the remainder of the 1856 session, dividing in favour of the ballot motion of his kinsman, Henry Berkeley on 20 May.J.P. Gassiot, Third letter to J.A. Roebuck: with a full analysis of the divisions in the House of Commons during the last session of parliament (1857), 7. In the following session he voted against Walmsley’s motion for a select committee on inequalities in the representative system, 24 Feb. 1857, and, after supporting Palmerston’s ministry in the division on Cobden’s censure motion on Canton, 3 Mar. 1857, was re-elected unopposed at the 1857 general election.

Berkeley was known to be opposed to disturbing the grant to Maynooth, but did not vote on any of Spooner’s motions on the question in 1857-8.Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1857 new parliament), 145. He did, however, vote with the minority for the second reading of the property qualification bill, 10 June 1857, and divided against Thesiger’s amendment to the oaths bill to exclude Jews from parliament, 15 June. He retired from the army shortly after his marriage that November, and neither voted nor paired in the important divisions on the conspiracy to murder bill, 9, 19 Feb. 1858.Williams, Parl. Hist. Glos., 147. He did, however, divide in favour of the second and third reading of the church rates abolition bill, 17 Feb., 8 June 1858, a measure he backed on seven further occasions between 1859 and 1863. He voted against Derby’s reform bill, 31 Mar. 1859, and after securing his constituents’ approval of the ballot, (of which a section of Cheltenham’s Liberals were held to disapprove), was returned again in 1859, defeating an unexpected challenge from a locally connected Conservative (Charles Schreiber), after ‘one of the severest contests ever known at Cheltenham’.Morning Chronicle, 8 Apr. 1859; Morning Post, 12 Apr., 3 May 1859; Standard, 16 Apr. 1859; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 23 Apr. 1859.

Back in the Commons, Berkeley divided for Hartington’s confidence motion on the address, which brought down Derby’s ministry, 10 June 1859, and voted with the Liberal ministry on the budget, 24 Feb. 1860. He continued to support progressive reforms, voting for the second and third readings of the paper duties repeal bill, 12 Mar., 8 May, and consistently divided for the ballot. He backed Gladstone’s resolution to equalise the customs and excise duty on paper, 6 Aug. 1860, and divided against both Horsfall’s amendment to the budget regarding tea and paper duties, 30 May 1861, and Stansfield’s resolution on national expenditure, 3 June 1862, which was intended to test the House’s confidence in Palmerston’s ministry. However, he opposed the government’s public building scheme, joining ‘a coalition of diverse interests’ to oppose Gladstone’s motion for government funds to purchase the exhibition buildings at Kensington, 2 July 1863.M.H. Port, Imperial London. Civil Government Building in London 1851-1915 (1995), 98.

Berkeley opposed the second reading of Somes’s Sunday closing bill, 3 June 1863, and supported the position of Dissenters, voting for the second and third readings of the tests abolition (Oxford) bill, 16 Mar., 1 July 1864 and pairing in favour of the second reading of Bouverie’s Uniformity Act amendment bill, 13 July 1864. Having declared in 1859 that ‘the franchise ought to be extended to the working classes’, he voted for the county and borough franchise bills of 1861 and 1864, and, having long favoured an extension of the suffrage to £5 householders, backed the second reading of Baines’s borough franchise bill, 8 May 1865.Morning Chronicle, 30 Apr. 1859; Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1857 new parliament), 145. Standing again as a Liberal at the 1865 general election he was defeated by Schreiber in another closely fought contest, during which his agent had found it necessary to warn ‘the ladies of Cheltenham’ against using ‘undue influence’, to the prejudice of his candidate.Birmingham Daily Post, 12 July 1865; Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 8 July 1865.

Berkeley’s father had been born illegitimately as the second son of the 5^th earl of Berkeley, and had claimed the title without result in 1811. In October 1867 Berkeley succeeded to his father’s barony and an estate of more than 18,000 acres in Gloucestershire, along with Cranford House at Hounslow, lands in Dorset, and ‘vast estates in London’, which embraced Berkeley Square, Stratton Street and Bruton Street.J. Bateman, The Great Landowners of Great Britain (4th edn., 1883), 167; G.E.C., Complete Peerage, v. 412. The Mayfair estate had been bequeathed to the 5th earl of Berkeley by Lord Berkeley of Stratton in 1773. In the House of Lords he became ‘a staunch Unionist’ after the Liberal split over Irish home rule in 1886, but then ‘practically withdrew from political activity’.Bristol Mercury, 30 June, 1 Sept. 1896. He revived the claim to the earldom in 1891, only to see the title revert to Randal Thomas Berkeley, a descendant of the 4^th earl of Berkeley.Huddersfield Daily Chronicle, 30 June 1896; Pall Mall Gazette, 30 June 1896; J. Shorter, ‘Berkeley, Randal Thomas Mowbray Rawdon, eighth earl of Berkeley’, Oxf. DNB, v. 388-9.

Berkeley was regarded as ‘a good and considerate landlord’, who made large abatements of rent during the agricultural depression, and ‘showed a practical and sympathetic interest’ in agricultural matters. The owner of a large herd of dairy cattle, he served as president of the Gloucestershire Agricultural Society and ‘did much to promote the establishment of dairies throughout the west of England’, founding the largely unsuccessful Berkeley Vale Dairy Shorthorn Company. He was also a local benefactor, supporting the local schools and hospital at Berkeley, and was chairman of the petty sessions bench. An active freemason and keen sportsman, he was for many years the master of the Berkeley Hounds, and hosted large shooting parties, (his guests including the Prince of Wales), at Berkeley Castle, and at Lairg, in Scotland.The Times, 30 Sept. 1896; Pall Mall Gazette, 30 June 1896; Bristol Mercury, 30 June, 4 July 1896.

Having suffered ill health for more than a year, Fitzhardinge returned to London from a visit to Aix-les-Bains on 6 June 1896 and died three weeks later at his residence in Hill Street, Berkeley Square.Bristol Mercury, 30 June 1896. His well attended funeral took place at Berkeley Church, the interment being ‘marked by the utmost simplicity’.Bristol Mercury, 4 July 1896. His will was proved at £98,425, and he was succeeded in the title and estates by his brother Charles Paget Fitzhardinge Berkeley, MP for Gloucester, 1862-5.G.E.C., Complete Peerage, v. 412.